


Conquest

by Elizabeth (anghraine)



Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Canon-Compliant, F/M, Gen, One Shot, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-16
Updated: 2009-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:09:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anghraine/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After years of tyrannical rule by the masters of Pemberley, the manor is destroyed and the land given to strangers - an ambitious foreigner and his proud English wife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conquest

Two riders stared at the dancing flames.

‘Well?’ demanded the Lady Æðelflæd. ‘Will you do nothing?’

Sir Alain d’Arcy looked wearily at his Anglo-Saxon bride. ‘My lady, what is there to be done? Look at their faces.’

She flinched. The peasants who had suffered under Lord Egbert’s tyranny were her countrymen, and Sir Alain was a Norman; but she knew far more of the man at her side than of them, and in any case, even a foreigner was better than Lord Egbert. ‘This is your home now.’

‘They did not set it, but they are glad to see it burn. I could no more ask them to quench it than I could ask them to do so with their very bodies.’ He smiled. ‘And this is not my home, Lady Æðelflæd.’

She held her chin high. ‘Your home is in Normandy, of course.’

‘No . . . _that_ home is my brother’s. I never cared for it. My heart is given to hills and mountains and forests.’

‘You will need to rebuild Pemberley,’ she said, but already her quick mind had gone to arches and stone, something quite, quite different from the dour fortress that had once stood here.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We shall create our own Pemberley, Æðelflæd.’

‘It must be very fine.’

Sir Alain hid a smile. ‘So fine that our descendants will be admiring its perfection centuries from now. Come. We must send the people back to their homes. There is a harvest coming in.’


End file.
